[4] The elections to Bulgaria's municipal councils are conducted via proportional representation with an open list preferential voting system.

[8] All of Bulgaria's political parties spent a total sum of 1,3 million Bulgarian lev in the electoral campaign in the run-up to the elections.

[3] A few months before the election, Bulgaria's National Assembly accepted a government bill, which cut public party subsidies from 11 down to just 1 lev per vote.

The bill also permitted unlimited donations to political parties by private individuals or corporations for the first time in Bulgaria's history.

Twenty people announced their intention to run for that position,[14] including incumbent mayor Yordanka Fandakova from the ruling GERB party, former Ombudsman and parliamentary deputy head Maya Manolova, VMRO deputy chairman Angel Dzhambazki, and Volen Siderov, the leader of the ATAKA party, who resigned from his seat in the National Assembly in order to announce his candidacy.

[19] The election was expected to be a very tight race between Fandakova, who had run the city for three consecutive mandates and Manolova, who is one of the only two Bulgarian politicians with an approval rating of above 50%.

The electoral commission ordered the seizure of all preference vote ballots in the town of Pleven due to what it deemed a "technical error".

[28][29] VMRO's candidate in Plovdiv decried what he deemed to be "monsterous" electoral manipulation and stated that he would refer the matter to Bulgarian public prosecution.

[30] Maya Manolova's campaign raised concerns over what they deemed to be "organized vote buying" in favour of Fandakova in three of Sofia's districts, pointing to large discrepancies between the candidates in several electoral sections, in which Fandakova has 10 times more votes than all other candidates combined, despite polling at around 30% in opinion polls and not being native to those districts.

[31] Manolova later alleged that the "entire Bulgarian underground was mobilized" to engage in widespread electoral fraud in favour of her opponent Yordanka Fandakova from the ruling GERB party.

He was denied entry by the policemen guarding the area and left by midnight after a long argument with the authorities, which stated that Bulgarian electoral law makes no provision for election candidates to observe the counting process.

The chairman of Nesebar's Municipal Assembly, himself hailing from the socialist party, stated that he believed the only explanation for these arrests were a "political order" as part of a "war" to seize power in the town.

[42] Following civil protests in favour of Nesebar's re-elected Mayor, who was held in detention, Bulgarian authorities eventually agreed to allow him to give his oath of office.

In addition, Bulgarian prosecutors stated that they were considering the option of calling for the annulment of the Nesebar election and the termination of his term.

[51] On the nationwide scale, the Socialist Party's leader Korneliya Ninova stated that the elections were skewed by "vote buying" and an "atmosphere of fear" among voters.

She also stated that the socialist party's candidate in the Lovech Province had also lost the election to GERB's nominee by just 347 votes and alleged that in that case the number of invalidated ballots was also "huge".

She finished by stating that her party was considering filing a petition before the Bulgarian courts for the annulment and rerunning of the elections in these provinces.

[52] A newly elected mayor hailing from the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival stated that a fellow local councillor and party member in the city of Strelcha was ambushed and badly beaten during the dark hours of the day due to his local political activities in favour of the party.

[63][64][65][29] On the provincial level, while the party didn't win any mayoral positions in the first round, it qualified to the runoff election in 13 of Bulgaria's regions.

[67] The Movement for Rights and Freedoms won the Kardzhali mayoral election on the provincial level in the first round and qualified for the runoff in the Targovishte Province.

The Democratic Bulgaria coalition, a union of centre-right and right-wing parties which represent Sofia's traditional "urban rightists" came in third, with its candidate Borislav Ignatov securing 12% of the vote.

VMRO's Angel Dzhambazki fared far worse than expected, polling in fifth at under 4% voter support, despite the fact that the party had spent the largest amount of money for its election campaign.

[69][47][70] The Socialist Party marked a major increase in support, managing to secure 4 mayoral positions, including the very hotly contested Pernik Province.

[71][72] Although she failed to achieve a majority, GERB's Yordanka Fandakova won the election by managing to score at just over 4% more support than her primary opponent - Maya Manolova, and was thus re-elected for another term as Mayor of Sofia.

[47][69][70] In an unexpected turn of events, a large percentage of the centre-right and right-wing voters, which had previously supported the "Democratic Bulgaria" coalition or the VMRO's Angel Dzhambazki, voted mostly in favour of Manolova, the candidate supported by the leftist Socialist Party, instead of Fandakova from the centre-right GERB party.

Despite this, political analysts noted that the newly-added option for voters to cast a ballot for none of the above allowed Fandakova to secure another mandate as Mayor of Sofia.

The GERB-UDF coalition managed to win only 11 of Sofia's 25 local mayoral positions, as opposed to the 2015 elections in which GERB alone won 23.

[76] The candidates of the "Democratic Bulgaria" coalition fared well, winning control over 11 local mayoral positions, the vast majority of which were held by GERB in the previous election.